The Final Voyage Star Trek’s Racial Legacy
Posted By The Editors | May 29th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | 4 comments
Print This Post
By Martha Southgate
Let us now consider Nyota Uhura. According to her fictional biography, she was born in 2239 and ultimately rose to the level of Starship Commander (so says the official Star Trek website anyway). In reality, the character was played for three years by Nichelle Nichols on that cultural juggernaut, Star Trek: the Original Series, which debuted in 1966. She was the one of the first African-American women on a series who was not a servant of some sort, predating Diahann Carroll’s Julia in the independent-black-women-on-TV race by two years. Think that’s not such a big deal? Consider this: When Nichols considered quitting the show after the 1967 season, Martin Luther King, Jr. asked her to stay, saying that Uhura was an important role model. She was beautiful, intelligent, fluent in Swahili, and an integral part of the doughty crew of the Starship Enterprise.
She was also the kiss-ee in television’s first interracial kiss, in the Trek episode Plato’s Stepchildren. What is often not mentioned (and would probably only be remembered by someone with at least a little bit of Trekker in his or her heart–like me) is that what brought this kiss about was not passion on the part of Capt. James T. Kirk (the white kiss-er), but rather the psychokinetic powers of the Platonians, one of the many troublesome societies that the crew of the Enterprise was always running into in their travels. They are forcing both Kirk and Uhura and Spock and Nurse Chapel to violate every protocol they’ve been taught as members of a starship crew-it’s a moment of utter humiliation, not affection. And, remarkably, it’s followed by Kirk being forced by the Platonians to crack a whip just inches from Uhura’s face. Talk about your slavery metaphors!
And yet…the kiss did happen.
In 1968 on national television, just a year after our country’s anti-miscengation laws were struck down by the historic Loving v. Virginia case. Here in the 21st century, when we have a president who is the product of an interracial marriage and cross-racial imagery is the norm, not the exception, there’s no doubt that the producers were making a definite and hopeful statement by writing such a scene-even if the characters did have to be forced together. Earlier in the same episode, their intent was made even clearer when Kirk says to a dwarf character played by Michael Dunn (it would really take too long and be too geeky to explain why he’s talking to a dwarf-click on the link above to check out the full episode) “Where I come from, size, shape, or color makes no difference.”
In the high-tech, cinematic 21st century reboot of Star Trek , the multi-racial ethos of the show is carried forward-but much less self-consciously. There are humans of all races working together on the Enterprise (I didn’t see any people from other planets except Spock-maybe next movie), and it is so routine that no comment need be made about it. In the film, Uhura is played by the exquisitely beautiful Zoe Saldana. To add a layer of racial complexity, Saldana is the New Jersey-born daughter of Dominican parents-she lived in the DR from age 10 to 17- and now she’s playing an African-born genius. That’s the way to keep that fluid racial identity thing going! In the film, Uhura’s beauty and intelligence are off the charts-the character has utterly transcended the slightly secretarial aura that she sometimes had on the television show. She’s expert in every language in the universe, ambitious and pugnacious. She takes no guff from Kirk, despite his dogged attempts to get over on her-and she’s Spock’s girlfriend (!), thereby crossing not only the interracial barrier but the interplanetary one as well.
As a sincere (but by the standards of the devoted, lightweight) Trekker, I was a little weirded out by the Spock/Uhura pairing, which is hinted at early in the film but only becomes clear about halfway through. ”For one thing, Spock just don’t have those needs — except, as revealed in one of my favorite episodes, Amok Time, every seven years. All Vulcans are biologically driven to return to the planet septennially to mate–or die trying to get back(!) The movie version of the Spock/Uhura relationship sure doesn’t fit that bill. Though briefly explored, it looks a lot more like love between equals–and I hope director J.J. Abrams will find a way to explore it further in the inevitable Trek sequels.”.
But on the way home, my husband pointed out something I had forgotten. There are, early in the series, a couple of episodes where Uhura is flirting with Spock quite openly–first in The Man Trap and then a week later (according to the original airdates) in Charlie X – and let’s not forget that while Spock is a Vulcan, he is also a white man (one with pointy ears and a really odd haircut but still….). Showing interracial flirtation on TV in 1966-that’s what I call boldly going! The more I thought about it (and yes, I’ll admit it, I thought about it) I found something cheering and hopeful about the sense that the film leaves that while Kirk has the pluck and the bluster and the hound-doggishness, Uhura and Spock have the smarts and the inner authority to quietly make things work, both on the ship and with each other. What’s more there’s something even more cheering and hopeful about the notion of a character who is supposed to have little to no emotion opening up to love from a beautiful, brilliant black woman-and that she would see that there’s more going on under his controlled surface than other’s might see. As a black woman, she might know a little something about masks and what lies behind them-even in the 23rd century. A stretch? Maybe. But the voyages of the starship Enterprise are supposed to take us someplace new.
We don’t yet have the planet of utter racial peace and harmony that the creators of the show hoped for but there’s no denying that images like Uhura’s and cultural messages like those embedded in the many iterations of Star Trek, have helped lead our nation’s consciousness a little bit closer to it.
Martha Southgate is the author of three novels, most recently Third Girl From The Left. She is working on a new novel to be published by Algonquin Books
Washington Post: Defense lawyer fights racism in death row cases
Obama on Google Plus – Ahead of the Curve Again?
Newt’s Poor Record on Civil Rights
JBHE Chronology of Major Landmarks in the Progress of African Americans in Higher Education
Embattled Connecticut Police Chief Resigns; Department Faces Prospect of More Officers’ Arrests
The State of the Union: The “Back Story” for Black America
Obama College-Aid Proposals Underscore Importance of Pell Grants
N.Y.P.D. Officer Pleads Guilty to Civil Rights Violation
F.B.I. Arrests Four Connecticut Police Officers In Racial Harassment of Latino Residents
I have a problem with the Uhura/Spock pairing on one ground – they make a boring couple. Seriously. They are boring. Zoe Saldana and Zachary Quinto seem to have zero screen chemistry. It could be due to the characters. Now I thought that Saldana had great chemistry with Orlando Bloom in a movie called “HAVEN”. And even she and Chris Pine (the new Kirk) managed to burn up the screen with mild flirting. But her and Quinto? Sorry, but I couldn’t see the magic.
I thought that the chemistry between Saldana and Quinto was beautiful and touching. There was a shimmer to their chemistry that gave the coupling a sweet yearning that was, frankly, quite palpable.
I am so glad that the writers of this new movie saw the wisdom in pairing Uhura, an African woman,
with an alien. Spock/Uhura make for an incredible couple, while Kirk/Uhura would have been mismatched and tedious. The bar scene showed nothing particularly special between Pine and Saldana, except for some cute sexual interplay. There was no burning up of the screen for me with this bar scene-sorry.
I enjoyed this article. I, like Ms.Southgate, look forward to further explorations of Spock/Uhura in future sequels-and judging from the overwhelming embracing from fans for this bold new pairing( with
Quinto and Saldana at the helm), I think it’s safe to say that we are not alone.
Spock is not someone with “little or no emotion”. What I saw in Nimoy’s Spock in TOS and the movies, as much as in Quinto’s, is someone very emotional, maybe the most emotional person of them all. He always had feelings, and he had desire, it just was not obvious for everyone, but both actors do a great job of subtly showing that Spock is simmering below the surface… except for the moments of emotional outbursts, when it all jus tcomes out, which Nimoy’s Spock had several times in TOS and a few times in the movies, and which Quinto’s Spock has in this movie, too.
It’s a misconception that Vulcans are without emotion. It has been mentioned many times in Trek series and movies that Vulcan emotions are very intense, more intense than in humans, which is why they have to keep such tight control over them. Also, Vulcans do NOT have sex just once in 7 years. That is a misconception that Star Trek writer & story-editor of TOS, D.C.Fontana, tried to correct many times, explaining that they can and do have sex any time they want. Pon Farr is just the only time when they HAVE to or they’ll die.
The article also does not mention the extremely important fact that Spock is half-Vulcan, half-human, which is particularly important in this movie. He also suffers racism from both sides – we’ve seen it in TOS, although human racism against Spock was more obvious in the show , while Vulcan racism against him was just mentioned a couple of times, but this movie puts it into focus. This makes him a particularly interesting character in terms of themes of race and racism. Nichelle Nichols said in her book “Beyond Uhura” that Spock could have been a story of a mixed race (half-black, half-white) person in contemporary USA.
@Rosie: You probably find Kirk more attractive than Spock (BTW it’s the opposite for me) so you think Kirk and Uhura “burned the screen with their flirting”. Sorry, but fact is, Uhura was not “flirting”, she was half-annoyed, half-entertained with his silly advances, and was not interested in Kirk at all. The situation was very easily recognizable: a drunken womanizer hits on you in a silly and crass way… yes, I’ve been there many times. Do you think her calling him ” a dumb hick who had only had sex with farm animals” was flirting? And I happen to think that Uhura and Spock, or Zoe Saldana and Zachary Quinto, had somderful chemistry.
Ivana, I have to agree with you on so many levels. Most of the die hard Trekkies are pissed, or just annoyed, at this paring, particularly how Spock is portrayed. I don’t think they understand him quite honestly, or at least the direction in which it went. I also think it’s kind of funny how these same people will sit there and say this when Spock and Uhura even flirted a few times in the series. I noticed it a couple times. I mean… I considered that smile in Charlie X to be rather flirtatious. Maybe I’m the only one who thinks this way. Through the entire movie, Uhura didn’t really like Kirk at all. She respected him by the end but she didn’t -like- him as anyone other than someone should respect. She loves Spock. Spock loves her. End of story. I think he was even going to have Kirk say that to Uhura before Kirk stopped him, knowing Uhura would not take it well if Spock’s “I love her” came from Kirk. Why do people assume that Vulcans only have sex during Pon Farr? I find that highly illogical. I mean, I could understand if Spock and Uhura were wanting to wait for marrage or something, since they kind of strike me as that type, but ONLY every seven years? NEXT. I think Zach and Zoe have great chemistry. It also helps that they were friends before this movie came out and they were cast in it. People think Spock should be completely emotionless. Sorry. No. He feels more emotion than others because he has a heritage where one side is human, and obviously emotional, and the other side is Vulcan, and logical. But wait. Vulcans feel emotions more so than humans do, they just repress it better with logic and reason. Spock is more vulnerable to emotion. He doesn’t act on it all the time but even in TOS, he showed emotions when he felt it was necessary. He shows emotions with Uhura because he feels comfortable around her. He doesn’t have to pretend to be someone he’s not. THAT is why this paring works. Case. End. Point.